


Pumpkins

by lizzieraindrops



Category: Ars Paradoxica (Podcast)
Genre: Aromantic Asexual, Asexual Character, Bisexual Character, Canon Compliant, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Lesbian Character, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: This fic brought to you by the realization that October 31st, 1949 occurred during The Roadtrip™, my perpetual need for more content of Sally and Nikhil being nerdy disaster ace/disaster bi solidarity buddies, and my eternal love of Greenhouse!Sally. SPOILERS for Ep. 29: Odyssey!In which Sally and Nikhil visit a pumpkin patch and celebrate Halloween. Then the roadtrip ends, and Sally has a long road to walk if she's going to find a way to heal and grow back into herself. And maybe she finds along the way that she isn't as alone as she thought.





	1. harvest

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a character death warning because it's canon compliant with the canonical events of Episode 14, but nothing happens onscreen here and the focus is on the before and the aftermath.

"Sally, _look!_ " Nikhil exclaims for the fourth time that morning, pointing out the window of their cramped car.

Sally rolls her eyes with an exaggerated toss of her head and then sticks her gaze back on the road. "Ugh, Sharma, we're not going to get to Point-of-Exile anytime in the next _month_ if we stop for every single badly marketed attraction we see on the side of the road. We stopped at _five_ tourist traps yesterday."

"But they have _pumpkins!"_ Nikhil says, pointing again at a bright yellow billboard with a cheesy-looking cartoon cornucopia on it. "Come on, Grissom, when's the last time you went pumpkin picking in a pumpkin patch?"

"Hah, say _that_ five times fast."

"Pumpkin picking in a pumpkin patch, pumpkin pi-"

"Oh stop. And hey, since when are you an outdoorsy type? After we had to push the car into the gas station two days ago, I was under the impression that you were practically allergic to any kind of physical exertion."

"It's not _outdoorsy_ , it's _seasonal_. Don't you realize what day it is?"

"What?" Sally asks, genuinely bemused. "It's October thirty-ff- _fuck_ , it's Halloween!"

"Exactly. Come on, Sally, I know you can't resist Halloween."

"What? How do - you don't know that, that I like Halloween. You couldn't know that! I didn't tell you that!"

"Please, Sally, I can just tell. You're exactly the sort of person who loves Halloween far more than the socially acceptable amount."

Sally opens her mouth and begins to retort but she honestly has no defense. He's dead on target. "Ugghhh," she says again, draping her arms dramatically on the steering wheel. "I'm being _attacked_ here." Then she sends Nikhil a suspicious sidewise look. "Takes one to know one."

"Guilty as charged," he says cheerily. "So, pumpkin patch?"

"Hold up. Am I the only one here who hasn't forgotten the other car that tried to _kill_ us on the road yesterday? I don't know if we have time for this."

"Look at it this way. The last thing anyone following us will expect us to do, is to waste time stopping at the cute harvest festival they've got going at a little farm on the side of the road. They'll never find us there. They might even pass us by! And good riddance."

"I hate how much sense that makes." Sally heaves a sigh. "We are _not_ driving fifty pounds of gourds back to Colorado, okay, I'm just putting that out there. I am not above calculating the exact amount of extra gas that would require, just to make a point."

"No, no, of course not. Just one that would make a nice jack-o'-lantern... and maybe a couple of those little tiny ones!"

"Aren't you worried they're gonna like, spoil in the car on the way back or something?"

"They'll be fiiine. Trust me, I once had a roommate who kept a pumpkin for _seven months_ before it started going soggy."

"Hmm. You know, I wonder if they've got any of those good blue baking pumpkins. For _months_ I've had this hankering for pumpkin pie like you would not believe. Even dream about it sometimes."

"We should look for one! I bet they do. Okay, get in the other lane, it's the next exit."

" _Fiiine_ , fine. But we are _not_ staying for more than an hour!"

 

***

 

Two and a half hours later, they're back on the road with three large and seven small pumpkins in the backseat. Sally's driving. Again. Nikhil hasn't been too keen on the idea after Sally's impulsive chicken match with the car that attacked them yesterday. But he's terrible at driving a stick shift, and Sally's evasive (or combative) driving is bound to be more effective than his if it comes down to that again. So instead, he's crunching his way through a paper bag of kettle corn they got from a cart at the pumpkin place. It's not quite the same as what Sally used to get at the state fair she grew up with in Iowa. Yet that familiar sugary-sweet smell, combined with the crisp coolness of harvest season and surrounded by a rolling Midwestern prairie... it's close enough to hurt like home, just a little bit.

"That's practically forty pounds," Sally complains as they merge onto the highway, but only in mock irritation. Despite the twinge of nostalgia, and the occasional unpleasant looks the two of them attracted from fellow pumpkin pickers, their stop at the pumpkin patch has left her feeling refreshed rather than spent. There's something fulfilling about taking the time to rove up and down rows of pumpkin vines without rushing, taking off her flannel overshirt and tying it around her waist so she can feel the sun on her arms, getting dirt all over her pants kneeling to examine the gourd selection, and just taking the leisure to stretch her legs and crack jokes with a friend under an open sky. She can't remember the last time she's felt so... grounded. Light of heart and step. Like she's just a person existing, insead of something strange out of place and time. Probably not since Vegas. Or at least, the first half of that trip.

"But look," Nikhil is saying, gesturing in the air with a piece of kettle corn, "now we've got enough for both of us to carve one, and you'll be able to make your pumpkin pie with that big blue-green one. By the way, if it's the weight you're complaining about, that is _definitely_ your fault, that one weighs as much as the other two combined! I had no idea how heavy those cooking pumpkins are."

"Oh, hush. And yeah, their rind is like, twice as thick as a carving pumpkin, and I think the flesh is denser, too. But it's _sweeter,_ and the texture is uh-may-zing, it's practically like the canned stuff the minute you take it out of the oven, you can scoop it right out of the rind."

"I didn't know you had such a baker's sensibilities about these things! Do you cook as well?"

"I mean, I can make a simple stew? It's edible. Sometimes it's even pretty good! I only know about the pumpkins because my mom was famous for her pie recipe, and she always _insisted_ on using the blue kind, and baking it herself instead of buying the canned stuff. Which, in fact, has actually already been invented in this time. I checked. Anyway, I've been trying to recreate - precreate? - her recipe, but I haven't gotten far yet."

"Well, you'll certainly have enough for several attempts if you bake that behemoth."

"I'm sure I'll need it. What about you, do you cook?"

"Ah... I mean, technically? I haven't burnt a house down yet."

"Wow. That bad?"

"Well, I wouldn't list it first among my strengths." He hesitates, then continues. "Mateo though, he can whip up a five course meal that's to die for, dessert and all. _And_ somehow beat me to the dishes."

"Holy shit. Alright, I'm impressed. Hell, I don't even date and I'd go on a date like that." For a minute, there's nothing but the rumble of the car against the highway. Sally watches Nikhil out of the corner of her eye. "Have you... been able to talk about Mateo at all to anyone, since you started stairstepping your way backward through time?"

Nikhil stares down the road ahead of them. "No." He pops another piece of kettle corn in his mouth and crunches it. "I have to say, the further back I've come, the more unsettling it's gotten for me, in more than just that way." Then he glances over and gives her a wry grin, having noticed her noticing his earlier hesitation. "It takes a little time to get out of the habit of hiding certain parts of yourself, I suppose. I had no idea what you would be like, what you accept and reject about the world, even if you are from my time. So many people still have the same kind of ideas as they do here. They just express it a little differently."

Sally sighs. "Yeah. Well, thanks for trusting me. It's... nice."

"Hey," Nikhil chuckles, "you came out to me first. Although that was probably my fault. Sorry about that, again."

"Ah, Sharma, water under the bridge, it's fine. And honestly, the way you reacted that night? You didn't push me at all. I usually don't talk to people about my orientation unless there's a reason, people think I'm weird enough as it is without me making more of a deal of it. But I guess, it felt like you wouldn't push me about how I identify myself, either. I can't say that about most people. Now or back home."

"Oh." Sally glances at him at the change in his voice. His face has fallen, like her casual frankness has struck deeply. "I'm sorry to hear that you don't even get to expect the respect you deserve."

"Oh. I didn't mean - I mean," Sally stumbles over her words, suddenly a bit self-conscious. She's not used to having people know these kinds of things about her, much less care. "Thanks, Sharma."

They go quiet. Sally rearranges her hands on the steering wheel. The sun is back out again and brilliant after the rain two days ago, unimpeded except for a few high clouds scattered here and there. Its rays are shining strong through the windshield and warming her fingers.

"I knew it would be hard," Nikhil muses, "coming back to a time where I'd have to be hiding more _and_ risking more. And I've only been here for a few days, but even though not much has happened... you've noticed the way people have been looking at us, haven't you?"

"Yeeeah. I may not be the best at reading expressions, but it's been written all over their faces in like, eighty-two point font. The 'what are _they_ doing together?' and 'is she traveling _alone_ with him?' and 'oh my word, are they _together_?'" Sally huffs in annoyance, not only at the familiar irritating assumption that she _is_ in a relationship with someone she _isn't_ , but also at the idea that someone who looked and spoke like her couldn't _possibly_ be in one with someone who looked and spoke like Nikhil.

"Did you see that blonde woman who tripped over a pumpkin vine earlier trying to avoid eye contact with me? Like, I don't know, like I would do something to her if she started talking to me." He looks down into his kettle corn, shoulders slightly slumped, shaking his head. Sometimes he seems so soft. Sally can't imagine what it must cost him to stay that way.

"I hope she fell on a really spiny vine," Sally says, but without much venom, and more regret. She reaches out to pat Nikhil on the shoulder, a tiny, insufficient consolation. He pats her hand in turn as it rests on his shoulder, a silent _thank you_.

Sally lets out a breath. The world is back to feeling heavier again. "I think one of the hardest things, about coming back here, has been realizing not only how much things have changed in my - our - time, but how much they _haven't_. Like, I knew that, even before I came back, but not in such an immediate way, you know? And maybe I don't typically attract as much crap as others have to deal with, but bullshit doesn't change how it smells just because you happen find yourself upwind. We're still wrestling with so many of the same goddamn problems."

"Yes. It's the same exact feeling you get at home whenever things get uncomfortable, you know? Maybe dialed up a bit, but it's the same. It's a bit disheartening, to say the least."

"I'm sorry, Nikhil."

"Me, too."

They drive without speaking for a few minutes. Sally finds she doesn't mind the silence with Nikhil's company. It's filled with the thoughts they've been sharing, yet companionable, even as weighted down as they are with the gravity of their words as well as their mass of pumpkins. The car's old-fashioned odometer logs another mile of their progress as one of its little number wheels clicks to the next digit. A small wisp of cloud briefly dampens the brightness of the late morning, and then is whisked away again by high-altitude winds.

Nikhil chuckles to himself. Sally looks over just in time to see his face soften into a smile. "I certainly didn't expect to have the opportunity to talk about any of these sorts of things when I got here. I was prepared to have to hold my tongue the whole time. It's nice, to be able to be more myself around at least one person here."

Sally tosses a grin back at him. "Honestly? Same." She changes lanes to pass a rare sixteen-wheeler on the near-empty road, its roar rising and receding like a wave as they speed past.

"I don't suppose you've found much in the way of acceptance for asexuality in the forties?"

"Pfft," Sally scoffs, "I didn't even really have that in 20[][]. I mean, on the surface, people talk about sex a lot less here, but that just means they _imply_ about it a lot more, which honestly isn't much of an improvement. Back in my time, more people have heard - will have heard?" She pauses to consider the tense, then flaps a hand in the air as if discarding the matter as not worth the effort. "Heard of asexuality, sure, and people get a bit more tolerant of unorthodoxy in the relationship department as time goes on, but... yeah. You probably know even better than me that it's definitely not all sunshine and rainbows."

"Well, there definitely are a _few_ more rainbows. At least in June."

Sally snorts, and they both laugh as they speed down the open highway, flanked by endless autumn-gold prairie grass.

"But yeah," Sally continues, "back home, I didn't know of anyone like me who wasn't a hundred miles and a keyboard away. And I was working in the middle of fucking Texas right before I came back here. Waxahachie. Not exactly a place I'd feel comfortable getting up on the lab table and shouting, 'hey everyone, I'm some weird thing that you've never heard of and that nobody cares about!' And it's always so hard to get away from work, and from the people there... I guess I just never found the time or guts to try and meet anyone else. And, I don't know, I'm really not the greatest at making good first impressions."

"Really? I thought you seemed delightful when we met."

"Hah. You should have seen me when I first got here. I threw up all over Chet Whickman and told Bill Donovan to go fuck himself."

Nikhil chortles in amusement. "Of course you did. I mean - that _is_ kind of hilarious - but I don't know that it's fair to compare being interrogated by ODAR agents while suffering the physical distress of a seventy-year jump, to grabbing a drink or coffee with someone."

"Hmph. Feels like an apt comparison sometimes. And like, not even getting into the whole 'how do I make sure they don't think this is a date' thing - if people don't already know something about the whole ace thing, it is so hard to get anyone to take you seriously about it. To even begin to understand why you might be feeling... I don't know. Shut out? Dragged in? Like people always want or expect something else from you that you just don't know how - or want - to _be_. It's like they'd rather deal with some fake version of me that they can already understand, instead of the actual me. And if I play along, and let fake me have all the screentime, it's like I start losing myself. Or something like that. I don't even know. This is stupid, I'm sorry. I'm sure you must deal with much worse."

"Well, our experiences are different, sure, and so are we. But that feeling you describe of, of having to be something you're not? Of people not wanting you to exist? I'm not unfamiliar with it, either. It's hard enough to just live your life under that weight."

Sally keeps her eyes on the road. It looks a little shimmery in the distance, but it's not hot enough outside to blame the sun for it. "Yeah," she says, her throat a little tighter than she'd like. "You get it." She swallows. "Now that I'm here, I haven't even bothered trying to bring it up. Never felt worth the effort. And it sucks. In some ways I feel as alone as I did in high school all over again."

"Mmm," Nikhil says. Then, he holds the bag of kettle corn out to her. Sally takes her eyes off the road for a second to scrape a handful from the bottom of the bag and shove it into her mouth all at once. She focuses on the squeaky crunch of the puffed corn against her teeth and the background thunder of the road rushing below them. She breathes in through her nose. She can't help sighing a little when the breath goes back out.

"I know what you mean," Nikhil says. "It's not like I was completely closeted back in 20[][], even at ODAR, but I'd be lying if I said I never went out of my way to not mention it. The agency may not hesitate to hire a diverse workforce, but that doesn't mean it does a good job of making people welcome. I mean, don't get me wrong, we've come a long way since - well, now - but sometimes, it feels like we still have so far to go, that I have to wonder if we'll ever get there." He gives the paper bag a few shakes, peering into it, then pops the last few kernels into his mouth and crumples the bag down.

It's a little surreal, just the two of them sitting in this tiny car having this conversation. Whizzing down the highway, something about the velocity and transience of their passing makes it feel as though no one could intrude on this moment. It's an illusion, of course, but they still can't seem to help acting upon it. They've laid out deep vulnerabilities and uncertainties as if no unkind ears could catch their words at these speeds. As if the distance they're going would safely leave behind anyone who notices them too much. Out here between towns, the roads are practically timeless. They could just as easily have been in either of their home times as in the forties, or even a few decades deeper into the past. It's disconcerting, but somehow, it also feels precisely as it should. People like them have been having conversations like this in isolated moments like these for ages, and they'll undoubtedly continue to do so well beyond the futures they came from.

 

***

 

Some time later, Sally says, "We should stop for lunch sometime soon. I don't know about you, but I don't think the kettle corn is gonna hold me until dinner."

"Forty pounds of produce in the back and nothing to eat. There's irony for you. We're not the best at planning, are we?"

Sally laughs, shaking off some of the somberness that's been lingering in the car.

"Hey," Sally says, suddenly realizing, "when are we even gonna have time to do all the carving and cooking with those? Assuming I decide to help you build another anchor point - which I haven't yet! - we're not gonna have any time for down time at my place once we get to Point-of-Exile. And I am _so_ not lugging those things into ODAR headquarters to drag them back to 20[][] with me."

"Well, I don't know about the baking, but I'm sure we can find something sharp and go to town on the lanterns when we stop for the night."

"Oh, yeah, let's just go scare up a couple of knives at a motel. Not suspicious at _all_."

"Okay, well, when you put it that way..."

"Hey, didn't ODAR give all you field agents Swiss Army knives or something?"

"Yes, but that doesn't help anything when it falls out of your pocket into the _ocean_ because your geospatial coordinator failed and dropped you six feet in the air above the bay instead of on dry land!"

Sally snorts. "You're a disaster."

"Oh, _I'm_ a disaster?"

"Yes you are. And, fortunately for you, I've got my pocket knife in my travel toolkit, and I'm willing to risk getting a bit of pumpkin pulp in its hinges in the name of Halloween."

"Do you always carry a travel toolkit? In case you have to do some rogue groundbreaking engineering on the road?" Nikhil says in a teasing tone.

"I - no - hey!" Sally stutters, thinking guiltily of the entire point of her trip to the east coast in the first place. He's actually right. "Being - uh, _prepared_ \- is _highly_ practical. How else are we supposed to have our impromptu traveling Halloween extravaganza? And you, you can't talk, all of _your_ gear is buried in the sand somewhere off the coast of Philadelphia. Do you wanna borrow the damn thing or not?"

Nikhil laughs easily and throws his hands up in surrender. "All right, all right."

A few minutes later, he whispers,"Psst. Sally. If the motel has a kitchenette, we could make toasted pumpkin seeds! I bet we can get a hold of some salt and a cookie sheet."

"I thought you couldn't cook?"

"Hey, all you have to do is put them in the oven! It can't be that hard, right?"

"You know, I would make fun of you for being so into this idea, but that sounds so good oh my _god_ it's been years since I've had pumpkin seeds. I fucking love those things. They're so crunchy. Speaking of, I still need food. It looks like there's an exit up ahead. Keep an eye out and let me know where you think we should take our chances, mister Road Trip Extraordinaire."

 

***

 

As it turns out, the motel _does_ have two-bed family rooms with kitchenettes, so they opt for one of those instead of two singles, despite the clerk's scandalized look. They're even lucky enough to find it equipped with an old stained cookie sheet, probably forgotten by some previous tenant. They manage to scrounge a week-old newspaper from the diner where they eat dinner, along with a gingerly-wrapped paper napkin filled with half the contents of their table's salt shaker.

They spread the newspaper out on the sidewalk in front of their room so it will be easier to clean up the mess they'll surely make, and fetch the two great orange carving pumpkins from the car. After spending a good hour in the last of the day's light scraping out the pumpkins' insides and getting cheerfully covered in the sticky orange strands of pulp, they've collected a sizable quantity of slippery oval squash seeds.

Nikhil's very enthusiastic about getting the seeds in the oven as soon as possible, but Sally manages to convince him that they need to rinse them before baking so that they don't stick to everything in creation. She temporarily repurposes one of her spare shirts so they can use it as a strainer to hold the seeds while they wash them in the sink.

Once they get the seeds spread out on the cookie sheet and salted, they take turns keeping an eye on them in the oven and sitting out on the sidewalk working on the lanterns. As they keep each other company talking loudly through the open door, Sally's pumpkin-patch contentment from earlier that day seeps back into her. They attract a few weird looks from the few other motel guests going to their own rooms, but no one looks particularly troublesome, and they're left alone.

Nikhil borrows Sally's pocket knife to carve out a clean-cut, traditional jack-o'-lantern face with a wide, toothy grin and impossibly symmetrical eyes. Since Sally's not the kind of doctor with surgery-steady hands like Nikhil is, she grabs a small hand drill from her toolkit and goes for a more abstract design. Spiraling from the top of her pumpkin, she drills a series of small holes at regular intervals of the golden ratio _phi_.

Somehow, they manage to only _slightly_ over-toast the seeds. Sally's not complaining - the crunch factor outweighs all other considerations for her. But that doesn't mean she's above teasing Nikhil a little.

"Well, we certainly won't have a deficiency of carbon in our diets on this trip," she says, grinning.

"Oh, shush. You're eating them, aren't you?"

"Hell yes I am," Sally replies, promptly sweeping a few more off the still-hot cookie sheet and tossing them back. Of course, those ones from the middle of the pile are hotter than the first few she snitched off the edge, and they burn her tongue slightly, instigating a small coughing fit. Nikhil laughs good-naturedly at her and pounds her on the back a few times.

Soon enough, they've finished carving the lanterns, and wrapped up all the mess of stringy pulp and cut-out rind in the newspaper and tossed it into the nearest bin.

"It's too bad we don't have lights to put in them," Nikhil says sadly as the sky darkens. "I bet yours would look just like little stars."

Sally opens the trunk of their car and rummages in her toolbox. "Have a little faith in me, Sharma." She digs up a couple of tea lights and a box of matches and waves them in his direction.

Nikhil's lights up like a struck match himself. "Far be it from me to ever speak ill of Sally Grissom's magic toolbox ever again."

The falling evening brings a cold-edged end-of-October breeze with it, blowing out a few of their attempts to light their lanterns. Sally unties her flannel overshirt from her waist and puts it back on as Nikhil fiddles with the matches. Soon enough, they're glowing from within. They set the pumpkins on top of the car, then sit on the hood to admire their handiwork while enjoying the over-toasted fruits of their cooking efforts.

"Your lantern looks great, Sharma. Real clean lines, and a real classic look," Sally says between bouts of enthusiastic seed-crunching. She's sitting cross-legged high on the hood perched next to the rear-view mirror and holding the bowl of seeds, next to Nikhil, whose legs are dangling over the side by one of the headlights.

"Thank you! What can I say, I'm a traditionalist about these things. Not the most innovative, I suppose, I pretty much do the same one every year if I get the chance to carve one. But I'd say I've gotten pretty good at it." He scoops some seeds out of the bowl Sally's holding and looks at the pumpkins again. "Yours really does look like stars. Is it a constellation? I can't pick one out."

"Nah, just the golden mean spiraling down from the top."

"Ah, I see! Simple and elegant. Well done, my friend."

Sally smiles. "Thanks. Honestly, we may be sitting on the hood of a crappy car in a motel parking lot, but this is the best Halloween I've had in ages. So thanks, for everything today."

"Oh, it's been my pleasure as well. Thank _you_ for indulging all my aspirations for a movie-quality road trip." They both chuckle.

"This is, like, the first proper Halloween I've celebrated since I got here. Hard to believe it might also be the last one I'll have in this century," Sally says quietly.

"We're definitely doing this again, though, right? Whenever we end up?"

"Oh, for sure."

Sally looks up at the first few brightest stars coming out in the indigo, and lets out a long, deep sigh. She's not sure where or when she's going next, but for now, she's content to be still, and just let herself fully experience this moment. Here she is, for the first time in ages, really enjoying herself without having to pretend or worry. She has the excellent company of someone she surprises herself by already thinking of as a dear friend. On top of that, she has the rare relief of being understood for who and what she is. She feels so much freer to relax and thoroughly enjoy the company without having to worry about him misreading their closeness. There's already a comfortable clarity between them, even a sense of solidarity built on the stories they've trusted each other to hear. Sally doesn't know what will happen when they get to Colorado. But for the moment, she's content like this.

"Happy Halloween, Sally."

"You too, Nikhil."


	2. growth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes life knocks you into the dirt, and that's where you find yourself starting to grow back. Several of Sally's quiet offscreen moments in season 2, episodes 14-16 (Anchor, Butterfly, Greenhouse).

As it turns out, the roadtrip back from Philadelphia ends just about as well as the trip to Vegas. Which is to say: abysmally. Perhaps even worse, in some respects. Sure, Sally might have gotten arrested for espionage, and been shaken by the actual shockwaves of the birth of the nuclear era on the way back to Polvo. Yet, while she had been horrifically aware of the consequences of _that_ yet-to-be-infamous experiment in a way that no one else from this time possibly could, there wasn't honestly anything she could do about it, except watch and warn. Those events were already in motion independent of her. And, on a more personal and less globally existential level? At least that time in the desert, she wasn't responsible for events that led to her watching someone she cared about bleed out in her arms.

After the return to Point-of-Exile, there's a length of time that she can't grasp the size of, filled with questions that can't be asked nicely and answers that are nowhere to be found. Hours spent in hard chairs somewhere in ODAR headquarters. Blood rinsing off of her hands in a bathroom with unrelenting fluorescent lighting, the glare just as unpleasant in this time as any other. Her body alternately racked with guilt, grief, numbness, and rage. Bombarded with whispered or shouted demands for explanations she doesn't know how to begin to make. The only thing she knows is that everything is wrong and broken.

Then she's no longer in the ODAR facilities. She's not sure why they'd let her just _go_ , given her involvement in everything that just happened at the Rainbow generator. But the truth is, there's nothing else she can do now short of time travel, and she's certainly not allowed anywhere near the Timepiece anymore.

She finds herself standing outside her little garden cottage on the edge of Point-of-Exile. She's not really aware of how she got there. Maybe someone dropped her off. Maybe she walked there from headquarters, so numb she didn't notice the change of surroundings. She doesn't know how long it's been since - since.

It's early evening. The last of the day's light trails strips of gold across the quiet mountainside and vanishes into the pines. The car she came back from Philadelphia in is in her gravel driveway - how did it get there? Someone must have had it brought back here from where she'd left it idling outside the building housing the Rainbow generator. Her mind goes to Esther. Esther Roberts, who brought her the least-awful sandwich option from the cafeteria at some point in the last whatever-it's-been, and made sure she choked down at least two bites of it. Roberts, who is at just as much of a loss as Whickman to understand anything that Sally has tried to find words for.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

She shuffles to the car and pulls the unlocked driver's door open. She has a half-formed thought of popping the trunk and getting her travel toolbox out of it, presumably to put it away. While leaning half into the car, she stops moving completely. Every inch of her frozen, even her lungs mid-breath.

There is one large blue-green pumpkin in the backseat, nestled among the seven miniatures in shades of solid and speckled orange, white, yellow, and green.

She slams the door shut and walks into the house.

 

***

 

She doesn't walk out the door again for the next two weeks.

Roberts comes to visit her. Multiple times. She's the only person in town who does. Except Ida from next door, who gets ignored whenever she comes knocking. Sally doesn't want any more lives to touch the whirlpool of skewed causality that hers has become. People die when they get sucked into that vortex. She'd probably ignore Roberts, too, if she thought it would work. But she knows Roberts: she knows it won't. Also, Roberts brings her an armful of paper-bagged groceries each time, and until she figures out how to get food without having to go to the store, she's a bit backed into a corner to accept them. Besides, she's grateful.

Of course, that also means having to deal with Roberts constantly nagging her to see a mental health professional. And as much as a part of her sees the logic in the idea, the highly vocal remainder of her isn't having any of it. She trusts neither the odds on this town's lone psychiatrist _not_ being in ODAR's shadow, nor the potential of her own presence in this time to warp the trajectories of people's lives. She can't knowingly expose any new person to that.

However, she can't survive without food, either. There isn't even anything edible growing in her backyard. And while Roberts' eventual threat to stop acting as a supply line unless she agrees to get help is a potent one, that's not the thing that actually erodes her resistance. It's the bitter realization that, if Roberts really did stop, Sally doesn't have real confidence in her ability to find a solution. She might very well starve if left to her own devices. And, more to the point, this isn't _like_ her. Her entire life's work revolves - has revolved around wrestling with far more complex problems until she has a breakthrough. But now, she can't even remember what that process feels like, or how she did any it. There's nothing left but fear and anger and pain and guilt.

She spends those few weeks as days spent frozen immobile in her soft chair in the living room for hours, and nights paced restlessly through the whole house. She makes only the occasional foray to the edge of the front porch, or once halfway into the backyard. The groceries Roberts brings her, she stretches as far as she can to make them last longer, a task made easier by the fact that she's finding it kind of hard to eat much. And while theoretically rationing supplies is a practical limited resource management strategy, it only ends up making her feel worse about the whole situation. At some point during this vague smear of days, she remembers to call Partridge and let him know she made it back to Colorado. But she can't bring herself to talk to even him about what happened. So she just gives him the bare bones of it: she's back in Point-of-Exile, things are bad, and she's going to look into getting help.

She finally calls to make an appointment with the doctor Roberts has been aggressively recommending. A few days after that, she walks briskly out her front door to go to it. She's going to stride past the mailbox. That's the limit of how far she's managed to get out of the house.

She can't.

Her heel grits in the gravel at the base of mailbox as she turns and starts heading back.

She can't do that either.

She stops midstride in the driveway, suspended next to the car. She really needs to find a way to return that to the rental company.

The pumpkins are still in there, clustered together in the backseat.

She stares at them through the car window for a solid minute.

Then she opens the car door, gathers the great blue one up in her arms, and hauls it inside, dropping it on the counter in an out-of-the-way corner of the kitchen with a muffled _thunk_ that rattles a few plates in the nearest cabinet. She goes back out, looks at the mailbox, then ducks back into the car to scoop up all the little pumpkins and take them inside, too.

The smallest one is nearly spherical and orange, only the size of her clenched fist. She drops it into her coat pocket.

She goes back outside, walks past the mailbox, and goes to her appointment with Dr. Fitzgerald.

 

***

 

Months pass. Snow falls. Therapy continues. It feels like some kind of work is being done in those sessions, although nothing really feels any better. But when Sally compares where she is now to where she was in November, it is different. She can go get groceries often enough to survive, now. It's still unpleasant. She still can't help constantly shrugging her shoulders in a vain attempt to rid herself of the lingering feeling of eyes on her, getting dangerously drawn from their proper path through this time. And yet, she manages to go and not have her heart constantly racing, which wasn't true a few months ago.

The blue pumpkin remains on her kitchen counter, largely ignored but never forgotten. The miniatures have long since gone spotty and soft and been thrown out. However, this one remains as solid and immaculate a waxy grey-blue-green as the day she cut it from the vine in the pumpkin patch, two states lines and a trauma away.

On one of the rare days she acknowledges its presence, she pauses in the kitchen and flicks the rind with a finger. The _thock_ of her nail hitting the gourd is rather short and muffled instead of low and resounding, no doubt due to the thick, fleshy walls and small cavity this variety is prized for.

"Both still here, are we," she says to it conversationally. She briefly runs a hand over its wide, deep ridges, feeling its cool smoothness. Then she abruptly pulls away. She pulls her flannel tighter about her shoulders and goes to sit in her chair by the lit fireplace for the rest of the chill February evening, trying not to think too much about the past.

She should call Partridge tomorrow. She hasn't been keeping in touch, and he's probably worried about her. And she misses talking to him.

 

***

 

Come April, everything is still frustrating and aching, if no longer as sharp and immediate. It's like this aftermath draws out forever, never weathering into a new _before_ that might grow a new _now_ she could stand to live in. Sometimes, amidst the desolate monotony, she can't help but miss the rhythm and mental stimulation of working at ODAR, even if she can't imagine ever going back.

She's largely left to her own devices, just as she was before Philadelphia. Before the roadtrip. It's still lonely, but at least she regularly hears from Partridge now. Being able to hear actual recordings of Anthony's resonant voice, talking to her, really drove home how much she misses him. He really is gone, completely unreachable except by the sounds she can send him. Sally wishes she'd at least been able to give him a hug good-bye. For all their initial differences (and him being a perpetual pain in the ass), they really have become close over the years. Close enough, even, for Helen to accuse them of having an affair, even if the very _idea_ makes Sally gag. She supposes she deserves it, though. The Partridges got torn apart by falling into her orbit. Maybe they were always going to anyway, with the way Anthony got about his work. The possibility doesn't make Sally feel any better about being the catalyst for their disasters. She wonders where Helen is now, and if Sally will ever happen across her voice on the radio someday.

At least she can still talk to Anthony, even if he's an instant eternity away. Honestly, it's a relief to have someone to talk to besides Dr. Fitzgerald or her recorder. Someone who _knows_ her, who already knows her strange history so she doesn't have to hide it, and who knows something about who _she_ is and how she moves through the world. And while it galls her to no end that she really is never going to see Partridge again, a voice on the phone is better than none at all. Especially when it means that he doesn't have to be alone, either.

Sally wonders sometimes if there's any way to get Partridge the kind of help she's getting. Could someone provide counseling via time travel phone sessions? Even if they did, it's not like Partridge could have even the illusion of doctor-patient confidentiality, with the way everything from the Blackroom, except his correspondence with Sally, goes straight to ODAR. Which would probably defeat the whole point. And there's no way to involve anyone from outside of ODAR without either rendering them ineffective by keeping them in the dark, or by making the likely-futile effort to explain the truth and probably committing a few kinds of treason that Sally hasn't already.

So she keeps Partridge updated with the town, the weather, how her therapy is going, and the stray cat she's kind of adopted. He complains about the tediousness of work as if it's just an average dull desk job, and recounts his adventures with innovative ways to entertain himself with office supplies. Once Partridge figures out that some of the books in the Blackroom are from beyond the forties, they institute Time Travel Book Club. They start with the few that he has which Sally has already read in her-past-his-future, and Sally starts reading the rest along with him, as they're released into her timeline or as she can find those already existing at the bookstore. On occasion, they'll reminisce about the Polvo days, or Sally will tell him the little she can about what their old mutual colleagues are up to, whenever she chances to cross paths with them in town.

Although ironically, Anthony probably talks to Roberts and Whickman more than Sally does, these days. Despite its practical nonexistence in timespace, the Blackroom is part of ODAR, and Sally is not. She hasn't even seen Roberts in weeks - she's probably too busy managing god-knows-how-many dubious covert operations to have much time for anything else, now that she's not worrying about Sally as much. And on the rare occasion she sees Whickman outside headquarters, neither of them can bring themselves to speak to each other yet. Sally knows she can't bear to even think about going back, not with all the terrible things that have happened. But she still feels lost. She's never been part of anything else since 1943.

When she mentions this adriftness to Dr. Fitzgerald and he says _it might be time for you to move on to something simpler. Have you tried gardening?_ it's probably just the first thing that pops into his head. Low-stress mindful labor that often benefits head cases like her. But for whatever reason, the idea latches onto her, and two days later Sally finds herself thinking, _yeah, why the fuck not. Having a garden would be nice. It could be a project to work on._ Almost unnoticed, some long-unused part of her brain clicks into gear, tentatively spinning up like a creaky machine that needs oiling. She goes that very afternoon to pick up some gardening equipment from the general store and a flat of frost-resistant annuals from the florist.

By the time evening starts falling, she's sweaty and tired and her hands and knees are covered in dirt. But she now has a little patch of pansies and snapdragons in her backyard, and the unpleasant buzz of unease that constantly lives in her chest has muted itself to a faint hum. That's something.

When she goes to bed that night, she sleeps just a little more easily than usual.

The next day, Sally finds herself up and moving early, making lists of all the things she wants to try her hand at growing, and drawing up a basic layout sketch of how she wants to remodel the backyard. She hasn't felt this engaged with anything in quite awhile, and she spends half the morning rattling off a preliminary list of supplies she needs into Partridge's voicemail. He happily listens and even offers to check the Blackroom for any post-forties gardening references.

It's already early spring here on the rocky Colorado mountainside, and she'd better get going if she's going to make the most of it. She'll have to research optimal planting times, companion planting best practices, and be sure to adjust for the less-than-ideal conditions of the tough soil and cool climate, and a million other things she'll need to learn about. It'll be a real project. And maybe she'll even get some food out of it.

 

***

 

As April bleeds into May, Sally slowly works over her whole yard. The snapdragons bit it, but the first pansies she planted are still going, and the petunias she put in not long after have really taken off. The little purple or white trumpets are a lot smaller than the big showy palm-sized blooms she's used to seeing all over garden departments back in 20[][]. Turns out, those are a gardener's dream that apparently haven't been bred by horticulturists yet, as Sally found out while being kindly laughed at in the florist's shop where she frequently pops in for advice. Still, Sally's fond of the little things, and she's already planted several more in the flowerbeds. She's even put a few hanging baskets of them out on the front and back porch of the cottage. At the very least, she's determined to have a few little pollinator gardens. They're mostly annuals, but even if they soon die off never to be replanted, they'll have done some good for the local Colorado insect population. It's never too early to start saving the bees, right?

She's even got a somewhat respectable spring vegetable patch coming along. Although she did lose her peas and her short-lived dreams of live-reenacting Mendelian genetics to frost, the collards are still thriving and looking leafier every day. Most of the vegetables, though, Sally will have to wait on until the seeds she ordered over the phone come in the mail. It'll probably be months before she has access to anything more interesting than the bare basics available in town. The florist has a great selection of flowers, of course, but not much beyond that. She's got some neat ideas for construction of a greenhouse to keep her occupied until then, but she's already chafing at the wait. Then again, maybe this kind of pace is the point of this whole exercise. To stop rushing. To let time take its own course. Maybe she hasn't been the best at that in her life, literally or figuratively. Sure, she's just as guilty of hurrying through life as any other twenty-first century girl. But also, because of her, people now actually have the ability to divert the flow of time itself.

But Sally's trying not to worry as much about that anymore. What's done is done. If she's going to move forward, she needs to treat what's behind her as the past, even if part of that belongs to the temporally linear future. And there certainly is something grounding to be said about letting the passage of time be measured in the incremental lengthening of leaves, in numbers of flower bells opened and folded. In the lengthening of days and the brightening of the sunlight.

After a long May morning spent clearing the ground where she's going to put her greenhouse, Sally heads back into the cottage, wiping her brow. It's still cool outside, but the gradually warming sun and the work are enough to make her thirsty. She goes to fetch a glass for water from the kitchen cabinet.

Sally's been spending so much time outside working the earth that she's hardly had any to spare staying inside and fighting her own thoughts. She's almost forgotten the pumpkin that's still sitting on the kitchen counter, half-hidden below the dish cabinet exactly where she set it down all those months ago. Just as she's pulling a glass out of the cabinet above it, her eyes happen to stray into that subtle drift of blue for long enough to see it. She has to sit the glass down and just whisper to herself, "Oh."

She lays a hand firmly on the gourd, rubs a gentle thumb over its still-firm blue skin. It's amazing how long it's lasted. She spends a good minute or two just looking at it, letting emotions wash over her and recede. "Okay," she says softly.

After making sure to get some lunch in her, she cracks the pumpkin open that afternoon. Getting through its thick rind is a bit of an ordeal, but after a bit more physical exertion than she'd planned on, she manages to get it cut more or less in half without sustaining any injuries from her big kitchen knife. When it splits open, it has a fresh, almost melon-sweet smell. The rich orange-gold of the flesh inside strikes a brilliant contrast with the subdued blue-green of the pumpkin's skin. And, nestled in the small cavity in its center, half hidden by strings of pulp, are numerous smooth white seeds.

She spends a long time sitting at the kitchen table with it in the late afternoon light, meditatively cleaning out the inner cavity and being ever so careful to save all the precious seeds inside. These ones won't be going into the oven. A few of them have even already begun sprouting in time for the spring. Long white shoots tipped with two pale green cotyledons shove their way between the netted strands of orange pulp, like sea creatures weaving their bodies through kelp. Even completely locked away from the sunlight in the pumpkin's insides, they somehow just know.

One by one she collects the dormant seeds and drops them into a bowl, tossing the few seedlings into a glass of water with vague ideas of possible hydroponic experiments. Then she sets them all aside to deal with tomorrow. Tonight, she roasts the pumpkin itself in the oven, until its greenish skin is barely beginning to singe brown and its rich orange insides are as soft as butter.

She can't resist scooping a bite of that smooth flesh out with a spoon and trying it almost as soon as it's out of the oven. The creamy texture is perfect, with hardly hint of stringy-ness, and the taste is even sweeter than she remembers from her childhood. Although of course she manages to burn her mouth on it, as always. And it hurts, as always. But she hardly notices that relatively small pain, because Sally finds herself stuck there leaning on the counter with a half-eaten spoon of pumpkin in her hand, crying her eyes out in the middle of the kitchen for an entirely different reason.

Maybe a half hour later, she pulls her tearstained self together enough to scoop out the rest of the baked pumpkin from the rind and store it in the freezer to use later. She can divert some time from the garden to work on recreating her mom's pie recipe in the months until her vegetable seeds arrive in the mail.

These seeds, though, she doesn't have to wait to plant. That second vegetable plot she's been clearing will be a pumpkin patch. That is, assuming she can get them to germinate and grow. But even if she can't, it'll be alright. She'll get more seeds somewhere and try again. And even if they aren't these perfect seeds that will let her grow something green from a tragedy, she'll still have a pumpkin patch eventually. And that will be enough.

 

***

 

It takes a couple days to finish getting the second vegetable plot ready. Thinking it would be months until she had something to put in it, Sally had let herself get distracted with starting on the greenhouse project. But the greenhouse can wait. She finishes clearing the vegetable plot, gets a fresh layer of rich topsoil laid down, and makes a few rows of little hills for the pumpkins to grow on. The temperatures should have risen enough to not worry about frost, but she'll keep a lookout and cover the patch at night as needed for a few weeks, just in case.

Soon, there's nothing to do but plant and wait to see what happens. So Sally fetches the bowl of seeds from where she left it in the kitchen a few days ago, in the same exact spot on the counter where the pumpkin used to be. But something makes her pause before just tossing them into the dirt and calling it a day. She's in no rush to be anywhere or do anything, these days, so she sits down crosslegged in front of her little pumpkin-patch-to-be and just rests there for awhile. The wide, drooping brim of her sun hat encloses her face and shoulders in shade, and her hands fold around the bowl of seeds in her lap, cradling them. She sits still and simply breathes the spring air, only sighing a little.

Maybe it's a little silly, doing this. It's not going to bring back anything that she's lost - and Sally Grissom has lost a lot of things. Her home. The place and people and culture she came from, her proper place in time and space. She's sustained serious losses in her autonomy, her health, and literal _years_ of her life lost in unconsciousness. Hell, she doesn't even know exactly how old she is anymore, what with those two-ish years in the CAGE recovering from her coma, and the offset of her original jump from August to October. And she's lost so many people, in one way or another. To death and life and who knows what other paradoxes. Nikhil. Partridge. Wyatt and Helen and the Barlowes. Hell, Whickman and even Roberts are hardly a part of her life anymore.

She'd had her chance to go back, with Sharma. She could have gone home, or at least to something like it. But she didn't. So she's made her own decisions, and buried her losses here in this place and time. She may as well live with her choices, and plant in the soil she's turned. This is where she is now, for better or worse.

Sally heaves another soft sigh, echoed by the gentle breeze, then nods to herself and uncrosses her legs. She kneels in the dirt at the edge of the patch and proceeds to poke little holes in the tops of the mounds, a couple inches deep. Then she scatters a few of the pale oval seeds into each depression in the dark earth, and covers them over again with soil. She pours water over her little patch, watches it pool and then vanish into the softened ground. She wonders if anything at all will come of them.

 

***

 

They grow.

It hurts a little, but kindly, like finding flowers growing from the fresh earth of a new grave. Sally tends to them with meticulous care, thinning the seedlings to just one or two per hill when they all start sprouting vigorously a week after planting, and protecting them from the frost when there's a cold snap. To her own mild surprise, she finds herself actually looking forward to going outside in the mornings, to see whatever minute changes they've wrought in themselves in the past day. Slowly, bright green vines with broad palmate leaves spill from the tops of the little hills they're planted in, unfurling new growth as they begin to feel their way across the ground.

Sessions with Dr. Fitzgerald continue into the summer, though not as often as before. Objectively, Sally would have to say she's doing better than she was. The fears and uncertainties and tragedies that live with her still dampen her days and occasionally chase her mind back into places she where used to be perpetually trapped. But she's gotten better at finding her way out again, and those familiar claws don't seem to hold quite as fast or cut quite as deeply. Nothing fixes anything that's happened, but gardening helps. The little tinkering projects she's started doing again help. Sometimes, walking out in her pajamas to cry over her pumpkin patch in the middle of the night helps, too. Her body holds tension less, or perhaps carries it with a little less strain. Her mind, though still far from well-balanced, spends a smaller fraction of the time feeling foggy and frenetic.

Even with keeping a weather eye on her pumpkin patch as it begins producing great golden squash blossoms, there's only so much she needs to do to it in a day. And while things _have_ gotten better, she knows she needs to keep her mind busy if she's not going to spiral back into an anxious languor over this necessary but emotionally arduous project. So she preps another flowerbed for some columbines, starts work on constructing the greenhouse, and dabbles in experimenting with super-fertilizers. In between, she makes a few attempts at the pumpkin pie, and while the second and third attempts are edible, they're not _right_. Whenever she thinks about it, Sally can't shake the frustrating feeling that she's on the verge of remembering something important that her mother said about the recipe, if only she could wrestle it out of her messy, time-tangled memory. But so far, nothing. So she lets the matter rest and works on designing a nitrogen still. It's far more satisfying.

After that, she's kept busy for awhile with engineering her own timed sprinkler system. The technical work makes her head feel as clear and precise as the water that finally flows from it in perfectly scheduled increments. She'd forgotten how real it makes her feel when she builds things, creates things this way. And if she's gonna start doing these tinkering projects again, the kind that make her forget everything else while she's working, it'll be good for her to be able to leave the garden alone for a few days or weeks without having to worry about watering it. She's gotten very attached to the cultivated parts of her yard, even if she's started diverting some of her attention elsewhere. She'd be sad to lose it to her own distraction.

Keeping her body moving and her mind on its toes does her a lot of good, but as far as her emotions go, she still doesn't have much she can do except siphon off what she can into her audio diary, and let herself cry some of them out on occasion. She talks to Partridge a little about it sometimes, but there's only so much she can unload on the poor man, especially when he's even less supported than she is. And she still misses having people. Having people _here_ with her. Sometimes it seems like recent events have only exacerbated that feeling. She's always felt that, to some degree.

Which is perhaps why, when Roberts unexpectedly starts showing up at her door again, Sally doesn't turn her away. Even though the shadow of last November hangs between them, and the woman is still deeply entangled in the deeply troubled organization that Sally has left behind. She's still Esther Roberts, with all the spots or stripes that that entails.

Warily but perhaps a bit hopefully, Sally lets her in and shows her around the garden. Even without Sally mentioning its significance, Esther notices the pumpkin patch right away. She's always been so sharp about the details, about noticing the things that matter, even if she doesn't then act on them. She's brilliant, really. Sally misses her.

"You have been busy, Sally. Are those..." she says, gesturing toward the patch.

"Pumpkins," Sally says proudly, well aware that she's fluffing herself up like a mother hen over a few dozen fig-sized green lumps in her backyard. "Tiny for now, but come October? It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! You'll see."

Roberts doesn't get the joke, of course. But that in itself is kind of funny. Classic Grissom and Roberts slapstick.

Although part of Sally doesn't want anything to do with ODAR or anyone who's still a piece of its shady business, she can't find it in herself to drive Roberts away. Especially when she came to make what sounds like a genuine apology for everything that's happened in the past few years. Sally doesn't quite know how to trust her, but neither does she really know how to not, after all this time. Perhaps they can find some sort of balance between the two, and Sally could have someone in her life again, a little. She wants to believe that.

The thing Sally has a harder time believing is the fact that she's finally breaking down and letting Roberts teach her that obnoxiously complex card game she always used to play with Wyatt.

 

***

 

They fall into a rhythm of cards once or twice a week, and talking without talking about the things they can't. Esther complains about administrative minutiae without dropping a hint as to the questionable goals those minutiae build toward. Sally chatters about her latest tinkering project or garden ideas, without letting slip a word about her correspondence with Partridge, or mentioning anything more than she already has about Nikhil and what happened to him. Sometimes their conversation flows as easily as it did back in Polvo. Sometimes it grinds and stutters to a stop, whenever they realize it's started tilting in a direction they can't go. They become familiar with scrambling pleasantries they can only bring themselves to half fake. There's a lot of ground they can't walk on, cold earth unwarmed by the summer heat. But they do their best to work around it.

Sally picks up Dilemma pretty quickly, once she stops dragging her feet out of past exasperation with the ruckus Roberts and Wyatt would always kick up about it, and actually turns her mind to learning it. Soon she's gotten good enough to give even Esther herself a run for her money every now and then. Sally won't ever admit it to Roberts' face, but it actually _is_ fun, especially as starved as she is for a good mental challenge.

Sometimes, the two of them will just spend some time in Sally's kitchen cooking a meal together. Sally makes a point of inviting Esther over whenever there's something new she can harvest from the garden, so that someone else can enjoy the season's first fresh chard, too. And when there's leftovers, Sally can send _her_ home with food for a change. Sally's still grateful for the groceries she brought her for those first few weeks.

On occasion, Esther will just hang around while Sally gardens. She's not much of a dirt person, but she seems happy enough to lurk on the back porch next to the petunias and just talk. In between pruning the flowerbeds, Sally ends up fretting and pushing a sun hat on her and being reasonably well tolerated while lecturing her about future research into skin melanomas. When Sally casually acquires a second stool for the greenhouse, Esther readily perches there, too, in her pleated skirt and sturdy pumps. She keeps Sally company among the various spare flowerpots and half-filled trays of seedlings, watching her pollinate tomatoes by hand under the glass roof.

On one of those garden days, when Sally's applying more fertilizer to her pumpkin patch full of growing fruits the size of her two fists, Esther asks about them again.

"Wow, those pumpkins really are getting big, Sally. Aren't they ever going to turn orange?"

Something about her expectant tone of voice makes Sally's gut twist unpleasantly. "Not these ones," Sally finds herself saying rather sharply. Roberts looks askance at her, but doesn't comment. It's really, completely irrational for Sally to be so suddenly irritated with her over such a throwaway comment that isn't even about her. For just an instant, though, something about the manner of the unquestioning yet inaccurate assumption recalls a jarringly different context. It reminds Sally of phrases like _late bloomer_ and _immature_ and _just grow up_ and _really? not ever?_ and _what's wrong with you?_ But Esther couldn't possibly know that. Sally's never told her that. They never really talk about these things. Roberts herself never has seemed to take an interest in discussing the details of what people do in their personal lives, and that's always suited Sally just fine. But more and more, Sally finds herself wishing she could talk to her about this. For some reason, Esther feels like one of the few people she could probably tell without her getting weird about it. But Sally doesn't know how she would even bring it up without making it weird in the first place. Asexuality 101 didn't exactly make for casual conversation material even back in her original time.

So they spend that afternoon the way the spend most of the days that Esther visits: quietly, playing cards, chatting idly, surrounded by the constant ghosts of friends who aren't there and all the things they can't say. Until, that is, Esther accidentally outs herself while talking about her ex-girlfriend, and suddenly a lot of things make sense to Sally.

And then crisis-steady Esther is panicking, and the only thing Sally can think to do to calm her only real friend in this town is to let her know that Sally's not gonna be a clueless straight person about this, and to share something just as personal about herself in return.

So she tells her.

And Esther listens.

They both exist, and they're both okay.

And from then on, even though there are still so many other things they can't talk about, they each understand a significant something about each other that neither of them would trust most people to understand at all. Sally, at least, finds herself feeling a little less guarded around Roberts in general, even if she's still careful about what she says around ODAR's head of Research and Development. On the topic of orientation and identity, if nothing else, she trusts Esther to know how be sensitive. Furthermore, judging by the occasional references to her ex that Esther now permits herself to make in Sally's presence, Esther has confidence in Sally's discretion about this, too. And even next to that great mountain of everything else that's gone wrong, they both know well that these are no small things.

 

***

 

They're ambling around Sally's garden one afternoon, between the vegetable plots and the flowerbeds bustling with bees, when Esther comments on the pumpkins again.

"So, they don't turn orange."

"Not this kind," Sally says, much more gently than last time. The corners of her mouth turn up as she admires the dozen or so gourds in her little patch, still green but swelled to the size of cantaloupes with the fullness of late summer. "Actually, they turn blue-ish when they're full size. It's pretty neat."

"Really? Wow."

"Yeah."

"How big are they going to get? You said they were those little pie pumpkins, but they're obviously not done growing yet."

Sally kneels down to carefully turn one of them over on the ground, as she does every few weeks so that it develops with an even roundness instead of pressing one of its sides flat under its own weight. "Give them maybe another month or so before they start changing color. And yeah, they're for cooking, but they're a different variety from the little ones. These produce bigger fruit. But I don't think they'll get much bigger than a large dinner plate, unless I'm lucky."

"Knowing you, and having seen what your fertilizer did for those daisies in the greenhouse, I bet you will be," Esther says wryly.

"I can't tell if I'm being flattered or mocked. Or both."

Esther actually laughs, and gives Sally a playful pat on the shoulder as she walks around the pumpkin patch toward the greenhouse.

"Why don't you show me how your dragonfruit seeds are doing, you gardening ace."

Hearing that, Sally has to take a moment to smile to herself before she gets up. She gives the pumpkin in front of her a friendly pat, being careful of its still-soft skin, then rises to her feet.

 _This really is nice_ , she thinks to herself. _Hell, maybe I'll come out to Partridge, too. Even if he initially blows me off, which is likely, he's probably bored enough to listen if I lecture him about it. And I think I'd like for him to know._

She trots over to the greenhouse to catch up with Esther. "Only if you tell the seedlings you like ladies. It's good for them, helps them have, y'know, a more rounded view of the world as they grow. Besides, there's no pretending to be straight allowed in the greenhouse."

**Author's Note:**

> The aP playlist I made for Sally a year ago sort of turned into groundwork/inspiration/a soundtrack for this fic, especially chapter 2. The playlist title, which comes from the lyrics of the full version of the aP ending theme, really became a central touchstone image for the fic. So I figured I'd link it here, even if it doesn't have the [original version of Mother Earth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cJYuZOIj-0) with the strings. Enjoy! Playmoss link: [with the earth down on your knees](https://playmoss.com/en/lizzieraindrops/playlist/with-the-earth-down-on-your-knees)


End file.
